Real-time scheduling and guidance of mobile robots on factory floors using Monte Carlo methods under windows NT

Abstract

Routing problems arise in several areas of distribution management and have been the object of study by mathematicians and operational researchers. We focus on auto-guided vehicles (AGVs) scheduling and guidance algorithm based on Monte Carlo simulation, and its execution under Windows NT as a real-time operating system verifying feasibility using the earliest deadline first (EDF) scheduling policy. For these purposes we simulate the environment in the laboratory prior to its real integration in the ceramic tile factory floor, working with mobile robots instead of AGVs (increasing in this way the flexibility and avoiding the outwork infrastructure) using Profibus Fieldbus Data Link (FDL) as the fieldbus communication network.